Scars Unseen
Hero
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D&D (2024) Should a general Adventurer class be created to represent the Everyman?
- Thread starter Minigiant
- Start date
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
Okay, but in the title you say outright and in the OP imply the "Adventurer" class is meant to represent "the Everyman" by which I assumed you meant the Everyman stock character archetype. Maybe you meant something else. I don't know. Of the concepts you've described here, only the first seems like it could be an everyman, so I would guess you're going for something much broader.
As for Adventurer, it seems inaccurate, or at least overly broad. I mean, all the PHB classes are adventurers, so wouldn't a better name for this class be Non-adventurer since it is explicitly not them? Or, if the idea is to distinguish the class from the professional adventuring classes by its lack of training, you could call it the "Amateur Adventurer" or just the "Amateur".
The real issue is there is no word for someone who "learns on the field". A person who enters dungeoneering with little training and either picks up informal knowledge from the experience, bits and pieces of aptitudes from allies and locations, hondles their natural talents via hard work, or relies on unbelievable skill via luck or blessing.
So I used a generic name
Theory of Games
Storied Gamist
When you think about it, The Everyman is a bad concept.
"Class" is equivalent to a character's profession: what they do for a living. Fighter's fight. Thieves steal. Clerics pray, heal and fight. Mages use magic. It's what they do and their capabilities allow them to survive dungeons and slay dragons.
But the Everyman is a nobody. A 0-level commoner who won't survive dungeons or slay dragons. A party of Everymen would be commoners with pitchforks and torches, which is no match for the traditional D&D party described above.
You could create the class, but why? There isn't a niche for it. Other than this thread, I haven't seen D&D gamers asking for a "commoner class". What the character could do (which isn't much) is easily covered by the real characters. It's like in the cowboy films where there were cowboy gunslingers and then there was "Cookie", the old fella who made chili for the wagon train. Cookie is an NPC not a PC adventurer.
Frodo and Will Ohmsford and Luke Skywalker are all 1st-level characters. They suck at what they do, but, get better as the story goes along. Kinda like D&D characters.
"Class" is equivalent to a character's profession: what they do for a living. Fighter's fight. Thieves steal. Clerics pray, heal and fight. Mages use magic. It's what they do and their capabilities allow them to survive dungeons and slay dragons.
But the Everyman is a nobody. A 0-level commoner who won't survive dungeons or slay dragons. A party of Everymen would be commoners with pitchforks and torches, which is no match for the traditional D&D party described above.
You could create the class, but why? There isn't a niche for it. Other than this thread, I haven't seen D&D gamers asking for a "commoner class". What the character could do (which isn't much) is easily covered by the real characters. It's like in the cowboy films where there were cowboy gunslingers and then there was "Cookie", the old fella who made chili for the wagon train. Cookie is an NPC not a PC adventurer.
Frodo and Will Ohmsford and Luke Skywalker are all 1st-level characters. They suck at what they do, but, get better as the story goes along. Kinda like D&D characters.
Remathilis
Legend
While I generally agree with this sentiment, I think it's good to break it down into two elements which are getting conflates.
1. Is there a desire fit players to play an adventuring non-adventurer type?
2. How does one do that in a way that is fun and not a dead weight?
I will argue there is a small niche community for the former. There was a long standing fad in MMOs to play as non-adventuring characters like shopkeeps, bartenders, and hobos sleeping on bridges (iykyk). And to that, D&D gives players plenty of options: 2e Sages & Specialists, 3e NPC classes, 5e sidekicks. Hell, you can take the common NPC stat block and give it a HD and prof bonus bump every leveling milestone if that's what you want. There are no limits to making a character who is weaker then the current PC classes.
But my guess has been that OP wants the character to be as powerful as your standard class, but not in the same way the others are. They don't actually want to suck, they just want to create the illusion of someone who sucks doing great things regardless. That's the harder nut to crack because you have to design a class with the same power budget as well trained adventurer who never actually learns how to adventure better. (If he did, he would stop being an everyman and just be a late bloomer regular PC). That's hard since the best answers so far has been a PC powered by meta-abilities the player is in full control of, but the character is not. That's hard to design (though not impossible) and requires a lot of understanding from the player.
I agree though it's a lot of work to design a PC power-level NPC.
Theory of Games
Storied Gamist
I laughed at "adventuring non-adventurer type"
Sure, you can make it, but I don't get the "why?"The Everyman works for "Can I RP a normal person?" type games perfectly. The problem is when it runs into D&D, where the PCs are NOT normal people. And I get that previous editions did something like the Everyman, but we're talking about the newest edition here.
It isn't THAT hard though. My example Everyman was a character who relies 100% on Metacurrency (Luck points). I mean that's what it's for across the industry: when PCs fail, using MCs (Bennies, Hero points, Inspiration, whatever) can turn the "ick" into success. D&D 2024 still has Inspiration and bonus dice galore (Guidance for the win!) so we know the impact of MC on gameplay.
Your "problem" is trying to create "balance" between the Everyman and the other classes. I have and will continue to preach that there is no balance in ttrpgs. Definitely not in D&D and LFQW proves it.
Just my 10 cents on it. If I muster up the desire to even run WotC D&D, I'll playtest my Everyman because it could be cool. I'm looking forward to seeing if anyone else comes up with a viable build, as well
Remathilis
Legend
I mean, I don't actually have skin in this fight except for theoretical. If someone came to me and asked to play a Frodo like character, I'd tell them to pick a sidekick class and warn them they are not going to be as good as a full PC class, even the weakest one. Alternatively, I'd tell them to pick a full class and role-play how they want. (I don't have a problem hand waving the training argument to have a fighter who was a farmer be mostly self taught).
I just don't want to create a whole new class whose intentionally designed to suck.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
Contrary to the impression my posts might have created, I'm not particularly concerned with the name. I'm just trying to understand the concept because I think it's important, when designing a class for 5E, to have a clear idea of its story. The central concept you describe here seems to be someone with little or no previous training who gains aptitudes as they go on adventures. It's a pretty broad, rather thin concept for a class, and I'm not sure it could be sustained over twenty levels. A problem I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is how the character can be continually depicted as picking up new aptitudes from the environment but not actually have those aptitudes become hard-coded into the character as class features. Maybe the class could have abilities that allow the character to temporarily "steal" aptitudes from those around them, like the 17th level Arcane Trickster feature Spell Thief, but it seems like that would make the character more chameleon-like than the class concept would seem to warrant.
Horwath
Legend
horizontal growth is "bonus" feats.
if you want to slow down leveling and still give players a sense of progress, then you can:
instead of leveling every 3-4 sessions(or whatever timeline you use, in game months/years) you could stagger that with a bonus feat in substitution for a level.
3 sessions; feat
4 sessions: level
3 sessions: feat
4 sessions: level
...
it will give new options and versatility to characters without vertical power growth(too much anyway, synergies will happen)
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